


can a lady disappear on the water, the way a bird sinks into the sky

by kwritten



Category: Game of Thrones (TV), Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Pirates of the Caribbean Fusion, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/F, Gen, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26012851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: prompt:: potc/got, sansa/elizabeth, free
Relationships: Sansa Stark / Elizabeth Swann
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	can a lady disappear on the water, the way a bird sinks into the sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionheartedgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheartedgirl/gifts), [nereid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/gifts).



potc/got, sansa/elizabeth, _free_

From the crowd, she sees her sister - her brave, beautiful, fierce sister - held back by soldiers as their father is killed. 

_Murdered._

Someone claps a hand over her mouth as she screams and screams and screams and there, on a dias, as the crowd cheers and Joffrey takes Arya's bloody hand, and puts it to his lips. 

It should have been her, on that stage, performing the role of dutiful servant to the Prince for all the people shouting below. Looking on as her father is put to death for a crime he couldn't have committed. 

Her betrothed, a betrayer. Her sister, a captive. Her father... 

_Murderer._

She screams and screams and screams, wordlessly, soundlessly, tears streaming down her face, as her betrothed declares her dead, declares her father a traitor and kills him, declares her sister a war bride. Watches helplessly as her sister - her ridiculous, small, fierce sister - has her left eye gouged out with a hot poker. 

The crowd murmurs and shouts its approval. An eye for a eye. A father for a father. A king for a king. 

Joffrey will wear the scar of Needle's wrath like a brand across his right eye for the rest of his life. She can almost see the pleased look on her sister’s face at the reminder of her own power beneath the pain, anger, and mourning ripping across her bloody face.

Sansa will bear the memory of the scent of her father's blood on the air, dripping into the dust, for far longer. 

Or she presumes. 

(The look of pure amusement in Arya's eye as Sansa is dragged away tells her that she never really knew her sister - or probably anyone in their small family - not really. And also, that Joffrey will one day beg for the memory of Needle slashing across his pale face.)

(If the tale of Queen Arya's conquest ever reaches her ears, 

The eunuch hauls her through the streets of the city, as she stumbles over her own feet and the dirty cloak he threw over her head every other step. Doors open where she would have thought there were only walls, strange languages are whispered over her head, one woman grips her face and pokes at her teeth like she once saw Jon show Bran how to examine a horse. Through it all - hours? days? minutes? - the tears streaming from her eyes give everything a hypnotic blurriness. Later, someone will describe a rare intoxicant and she will remember these strange moments, half lost to pain and hysteria and numbness, of alleyways and parlors and dirty cups full of broth shoved into her shaking hands. Later, someone will ask her about her childhood and she will remember swords swinging upon the necks of a wolf and a father, and a blurred image of a boy with dark hair that smelled of snow, and the way fear and horror can drug the mind into oblivion. At the end of it, was water and then a gangplank and then a swaying hammock and then the soft vowels of Dornishmen and then blackness. 

No doubt the Spider intended for the presumed-dead princess of the North to be delivered safely into the hands of the Martells. This detail Sansa will piece together very quickly. Grief can blur the edges, but it cannot dull a sharpened blade. 

The weeks of travel on the merchant ship - the weeks after her escape from a life in the palace with Joffrey, the one Happy Ending she had coveted her whole waking life - were on warm seas, surrounded by cheerful Dornish sailors and fishermen. The Martells were about as safe as anyone or anywhere for a dead girl, and Sansa had already begun a pretty fantasy of living out her days in the same ease and comfort as she had begun them, a princess of Dorne, when a sickness began sweeping through the crew. 

Sansa had known fear, and helplessness, but never before had she experienced anything like this all-encompassing despair and fatigue. Within twenty-four hours of the First Mate's valet being struck with a cough and what they all presumed was a simple heat rash, over half the crew was laid out on the deck, whispering prayers to the Seven for death. The wind stilled, as if to make it clear that no one above or below was listening, and the cries and moans of the men and women aboard seemed to fill the whole world. 

She and the few others who could continue to move about, did their best to nurse the ill, though nothing seemed to ease their suffering - aside from death. After three days, some of the older crew members began throwing themselves into the silent and dark water of the sea. Sansa walked up and down rows of bleeding, coughing patients, spoon-feeding them water and broth for hours upon hours. Slowly, a breeze began to pick up from the South, and the conscious sailors wept with relief. 

Over the course of seven days, over half of the crew had died - and those that recovered from the mysterious illness seemed so haggard of mind and spirit as to be equivocally changed. The next three weeks were even more difficult, working with only the barest supplies and manpower, the ship limped into port. Sansa threw herself into the exhausting work of a ship-hand, sleeping more deeply in her rocking hammock tied to the mast beneath the open sky than she ever did in her cozy room at home. 

By the time they reached Dorne, Sansa was an entirely different girl. Thin, tanned from the sun, her hands and feet blistered and reddened, her dark auburn hair bleached almost to the color of strawberries in the harsh sun. She spoke deep in her throat as though she had been borne screaming into the brackish wind of the seas, and laughed deep in her belly like a woman grown. No one would believe her to be a lost princess of the North. 

It didn't take much effort to slip off the ship in the middle of the night as they waited for docking rights, slipping into the warm water like a mermaid of the old stories and swimming up to the bustling wharf. Not that she believed the old merchant would hold her to the Spider's promises - whatever they had been - after all they had suffered, but she had learned nothing if not to be cautious. 

It should have been difficult to begin as a different person - as her family fought and died in a bloody war. 

But then, she'd always been told she had been selfish, hadn't she?

What better way to honor her old life, than by taking their criticisms to heart? 

* * * * 

"Some say she is _nearly_ as bewitching as you, my King."

Elizabeth kept her gaze fixed on the horizon, trying to ignore her First Mate as best she could. Biyu was young and a bit fanciful. But damn if she wasn't good in battle. Elizabeth trusted no one on board her ship more - let alone the sea - than Biyu. However, the woman loved gossip - especially pirate gossip. And though she had lost a few of the more seasoned sailors when she rose Biyu up to her side, she had also won quite a few more battles with Biyu's crossbow behind her. 

"I believe we will reach Dorne by nightfall, everyone seems restless for a night on land," Elizabeth tried - unsuccessfully - not to sound a little disgusted by the notion. 

Her feet touched the bare earth as rarely as possible. 

Especially these days. 

"That is what I'm trying to tell you!!" Binyu looked at her like the cat that got the cream. "The sailor everyone is talking about. She's supposed to be in Lemonwood! We could go just a bit further..."

"We're on a path to Sunspear, why would I redirect now. Just for some girl?"

"Once upon a time, weren't we all 'just girls' and also-” Binyu held up her left hand in defiance of her Captain and Elizabeth bristled, “Didn’t you promise me a new assistant.”

She could practically _feel_ the crew’s eyes skate up the right side of her body. Their last booty came with quite a few losses - one of the main reasons why Elizabeth was so eager to get them all on an extended shore leave. It was time to repair the ship, get her people loaded and laid, and … see a proper witch doctor about the burns that now traveled up her right side. As much as she brushed it off, they had all noticed her limp, the way she kept her right hand gloved and tucked into the top of her trousers. She needed time to heal in private, and in all their lengthy arguments about whether she was ready to go topside (she was!) (she probably hadn’t been), Binyu had gotten her to promise a new girl. One with experience. 

Elizabeth had either been very drunk or very horny - most likely both - the night that she and her First Mate had conspired to bring on someone… someone at their level. Someone for _them_ , in the way that the crew couldn’t be, by the very nature of hierarchy that had driven so many of them to the sea in the first place. The irony was not lost on anyone. A fling with a stow-away was one thing. Teasing and flirting was quite another. An _affair_ was just damn bad luck. 

It wasn’t women aboard ships that brought sailors bad luck - in Elizabeth’s experience - it was broken hearts. 

Broken hearts had a way of festering, bleeding at inopportune moments.  
Causing hell and war and bloodshed.  
Things Elizabeth had sold part of her soul to leave behind in another world. 

She sighed. 

Binyu clapped her hands, “Calypso is going to _flip_.”

***

She felt as though every time she came to shore - especially this far North - the chances of her being recognized grew stronger and stronger. 

Robb, Catelyn, and Robert were no longer even whispers of a memory on the wind. Daenerys Targarean and Arya Stark sat upon the Iron Throne and ruled over monsters and humans alike with a firm but gentle hand. She had heard Bran’s voice out of the mouth of an old man with white eyes in a tavern while she was still young enough for it to hurt - she’d killed him, just in case. Jon had disappeared into the Wilds - or was a King in his own right - or had claimed the Iron Throne and was beheaded by the Kingslayer - or was a monster himself - or was a dragon rider. She liked that last one the best, thinking of him on the wind.

There was no reason for anyone to search her out, for anyone to recognize a lost daughter in a weatherbeaten sailor. And yet…. 

The young woman stifled a scream as Sansa pulled her into a dark alley, turning her swiftly face-first into the wall and the sharp point of her trusty knife at the woman’s back. She had noticed the shadow to her right for the better part of the afternoon, but only as the shadows deepened did her tail grow more bold. Her undoing. 

Long, lean limbs pushed back against Sansa’s grip as she snarled, “Who sent you?”

“Well, isn’t this interesting, Bin?” a smoky voice said from behind her. 

The woman in her arms went soft and pliant, shocking Sansa into stepping backwards, to face the new presence. 

“She is strong, Captain,” the woman who had been following her all afternoon turned lazily towards them, pulling one foot up behind her on the wall as if she were any sailor in any tavern flirting with a serving wench behind the bar. In the dim light, Sansa could pick out dark, straight hair, high cheekbones in a wide face, and narrow eyes. This woman was from farther East than Sansa had yet travelled and despite the circumstances, was overwhelmed with a desire to settle in with a tankard and learn the woman’s story. Or just run away with her. 

It had been a while since she’d fallen in love. 

Tonight wasn’t a terrible night for it. 

The other figure ducked slowly into the light. 

“Captain Swann,” Sansa breathed, dropping her hand with the knife to her side, a mixture of fear, elation, and wonder bearing down on her. 

There was no mistaking that long, tangled blonde hair, the pert nose, the bright blue eyes, the long body, the strange Captain’s hat. She was everything the Wanted posters and legends said. A long, thick chain lost itself in her shadow of cleavage and Sansa fought the urge to wonder what was at the other end of it. 

_Woah, alright._

“Your reputation does not do you justice, Lady Sand”

“Yours either,” Sansa shook her head, “Wait, what?”

“How sweet, your beauty has her tongue-tied.”

“Shut up, brat,” the Captain leaned into the other woman as she slid an arm under her jacket and around her waist. “Or I won’t let her come with us.”

Instead of saying the rational thing… like: _like I’d go anywhere with you_ or _presumptuous, much_ she blurted out, “Where are we going?” 

_Idiot._

Captain Swann’s eyes twinkled, “Why, to see a witch about a curse, of course.”


End file.
